Abstract
Drawing provides a useful window into aspects of visual representation and the crosstalk between perceptual and motor systems. One challenge in studying how these skills develop lies in the temporally staggered timelines of visual versus fine motoric development in typically developing infants. Babies acquire significant visual sophistication within the first year, but begin to engage in drawing only at toddlerhood. However, our work with a unique group of children born blind and left to languish without treatment for several years allows for a closer merging of these two timelines. In our scientific and humanitarian initiative, Project Prakash, we identify and provide surgical sight treatment to such children. Here, we describe our work with longitudinal tests of visual-motor integration and reading/writing readiness. We created a series of assessments to track the developmental trajectory of basic tracing, copying, and drawing skill via both the haptic and visual domains. Our tasks address two related aspects of visual development: (a) the emergence of an internal representation of the visual world, and (b) translation of this representation onto a 2D space when drawing. I will present multiple analyses performed on this rich data set, including measures of recognizability, a semantic annotation platform to crowdsource labeling of meaningful strokes, and a survey for quantifying the multi-dimensional developmental trajectory of drawing, including perspective, occlusion, and gestalt representation. Overall, we find that while children’s drawings become more recognizable as they gain visual experiences, specific representational dimensions continue to show impairments. These limitations cannot be explained by delays in fine motor skills, as no such delays are found soon after treatment. I will introduce our journey to incorporate these assessments into a pilot educational program for newly sighted children, designed to support them as they learn to integrate vision and scaffold off the abilities they formed while blind.